Jane shakes her head. “What are you blabbering on about?”
“It is going to take time to deal with the events of the past few days, but time is something we do not have right now—and in the meantime, you cannot take it out on them.” I point at the cloud of dust that marks the wagon’s passage.
“So you think you and I should just have at it in the middle of the road until the dead catch up?” she asks. She is breathing hard, and her expression has gone stony, a sure sign that my words found their mark.
“I am going to do what I can to get you to focus, Jane. I am going to be your target because I can handle your ire in a way they cannot. Sometimes a little physical release, directed and controlled, can quiet the heart just a bit.” I do not tell her about the way my heart breaks for her loss, nor the constant, creeping waves of panic that lap at my consciousness. Heartfelt confessions have never moved Jane the way that actions do, and if I want to help her, if I want to show her that I am her friend, I have to do that in a way that she understands.
And if there is anything Jane understands, it is combat.
“I am sorry . . . I am sorry that this world demands more of you than you should have to give. But that is not a reason to expect more of these untrained women and children than they have to give. We have the ability to protect them, and so we have the responsibility to do so, as long as we are able. Putting their survival solely on their own shoulders? Making them run alongside the wagon like livestock while they slowly succumb to exhaustion? That is not who we are, Jane. We can survive without being cruel to one another. I refuse to believe that we have to be like those we hate in order to carry on.”
Something in her face shifts, some piece of whatever she is working through falling into place. I am jubilant that I am getting through to her.
And so I am not watching for the fist that comes flying toward me.
The punch is a good one, aimed right for the space below my corset. I backstep too late, and she catches the corset’s edge. My breath whooshes out of me, and the force of the blow sends me stumbling back a few steps.
“You want a fight?” she says as I gasp for air. Her face is a blank mask. All of her emotions have retreated, leaving nothing but an expression of polite interest. She has locked herself down tight, focusing on nothing but the moment. “Well, then, let’s go.”
I take a deep breath and straighten. The corset absorbed some of the blow, but not enough. Jane is not pulling her punches.
So then, neither will I.
It was customary to spar at Miss Preston’s. The instructors ignored no aspect of our education and knowing how to defeat a living person as well as the dead was part and parcel of our instruction in protecting well-to-do women. While the dead may let their hunger overwhelm them, the same may be said of live men and their passions. A Miss Preston’s girl was tasked with protecting her charge against all ravenous monsters, not just the undead sort.
Grappling in the middle of a dusty road, with a cadre of dead on one side and a wagon of terrified women on the other, however, is definitely not something a Miss Preston’s girl should do. But if I cannot help Jane through this, these emotions she would rather bottle up than contend with, then she will misstep when it matters most. I cannot let that happen. I owe her my life for saving me back in Summerland.
And I have few enough friends as it is. I need to hang on to the ones I possess.
I sidestep Jane’s next punch, and the follow-up that comes behind it. Her swing is wild, uncontrolled, and I easily land a blow of my own to her midsection. She doubles over, and I place my hands on my hips. “Honestly, Jane, you are fighting angrily, and your form is amateur. Remember your lessons for once, will you?”
I barely have time to dodge the kick that comes for my head, and as I dance out of the range of Jane’s foot my own anger surges, hot and fierce.
“You looking awfully red in the face there, Kate,” Jane drawls.
She is right. A slap or a punch is just sparring; a kick has the ability to immobilize me, if she were to land it, maybe long enough for the horde to overtake us.
“Jane, that was a very bad decision.”
I step in close, faster than she is expecting. Not everything I know about combat was learned at Miss Preston’s. After running away from home, I spent several months living in Bayou la Southe. That had not been my plan, but life cares not for the plans of Negro girls, passing light or otherwise. I learned a lot running with the Laveaus, a group of disgraced voodoo women who dedicated themselves to stopping the slavers that ran their cargo up and down the Mississippi River. And one of the things I learned was how to fight dirty while wearing a corset.
I wait for Jane’s next swing, catching her arm and pulling her forward. Her momentum means she falls into me, her torso open and unprotected, so it is easy to bring my knee up into her midsection.
The breath goes out of her, and I take the opportunity to spin around behind her, locking my arm around her throat.
“You are out of sorts. You need to rest, to let yourself grieve and come to terms with what happened in Summerland. Losing Jackson is just compounding your distress.”
She flails, making a terrible gurgling sound that I ignore. In my mind I recite Psalm 23, it is much more pleasing than listening to Jane choke. Before she loses consciousness, I release her. “Look at yourself,” I say, my voice made of razors. “You are sloppy, your moves are reckless. I know feelings are never something you want to talk about, but you cannot handle this all by yourself. You just. Can. Not.”
Jane coughs and heaves. Tears fall from the corners of her eyes, and murder is writ large on her face. I really cannot blame her. I did best her but good.
For a moment I am worried Jane will swing at me again, but then her shoulders slump and a long, low wail comes from her.
“It ain’t fair,” she says, her voice almost too quiet to hear.
“No, it ain’t,” I agree, my tongue tripping over the improper English and my heart aching for her once more. “And I am so, so sorry.”
Jane sobs brokenly, her body shuddering. I pull her into my side, supporting a good deal of her weight, and let her cry, the kind of release she would not allow herself. We begin to walk.
The day is still, and our luck holds. We are able to keep pace with the wagon a hundred yards ahead of us, and the horde behind keeps its distance.
And for now, this is enough.
This is the excellent foppery of the world that when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeits of our own behavior—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence. . . . An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star.
—Shakespeare, King Lear
—JANE—
Chapter 7
In Which Our Luck Runs Out. Again.
A dozen or so miles from the homestead, and a couple of headachy hours after I’ve managed to stop crying, the dead catch up to us.
I walk sullenly beside Katherine after our middle-of-the-road fisticuffs. I’m still sore about her using that neck hold on me, and my throat aches every time I swallow. But I’m also impressed that she could be so ruthless. I ain’t ever seen that side of her before, and I wonder what other kinds of tricks she has up her sleeve.